I too..dislike burnt steaks.

TLDR.

Im confident that a solution exists, but it most likely involves a significant hardner nerf (with them switched over to passive instead of active), and a vehicle buff to the point where they are usable without hardners. But im not suggesting anything - this is simply the problem i see, CCP can do the rest if they so chose


how could i have inconvenienced you like that! that will teach me for using words i tell you what!

Perhaps CCP Rattati can draw inspiration from Eve Online to address hardeners.

In Eve Online, a specific class of ships known as Marauders are the only ships in Eve capable of going into what we call Bastion mode. What is Bastion mode and what does it do?

It is a mode that needs to be manually activated and goes into a set cycle of about 10 minutes if I remember the timer correctly. During this time, the ship morphs into a reinforced state where various bays are opened exposing what look like reactors to the vacuum of space. At the same time, the ship's damage resistance to any type of damage is increased by a large magnitude where it can take on almost any damage and survive until the timer runs out. Meanwhile, the ship is still able to fire back.

But there are downsides to using Bastion mode.

Once the mode is activated you can't move, you can't take in any remote repairs from another player, the mode does nothing to your damage output, and you can't manually deactivate until the timer runs its course. So if anything happens to your fleet like if they are forced to retreat, you get left behind and the opposing fleet can have their way with you. Which brings me to the next downside.

Bastion mode, is not full proof. Given enough damage in a short time, the seemingly-unbreakable tank on your ship will break. This is especially true if the ships that fire their powerful weapon happen to be Drifters which can one-hit kill even a Marauder in Bastion Mode.

How can this be applied to Dust?

The concept of Bastion mode can be adapted for use in Dust by making the following changes to the hardeners:

• Extend the time active significantly.
• Vehicles such as LAVs and HAVs that have this module become immobilized when it's active.
• Dropships are forced to hover in a stationary position but can change which way to look during the hover. They can't increase or decrease altitude.

The idea here is that hardeners are taking up so much power to increase the damage resistance of the vehicles that they are unable to furnish enough power to keep the vehicles moving. So the vehicles become sitting ducks until the hardeners finish their cycle. This also means that they won't be able to help their team in other places if they are needed elsewhere in a battle that changes rapidly.

Bastion modules are one thing but they would have to be enforcer or marauder specific and convey very real and tangible benefits to the HAV basically chaining itself into position.

In addition to damage mitigation you'd be talking rep bonuses, possibly heat build up reduction, maybe even RoF or something like that.

However the issue plaguing HAV is that they aren't tanks. They don't function like tanks, and they are so general purpose that they will never have a real battlefield role.

First off i forgot if its Windows of Opportunity or Waves of Opportunity, but im referring to CCPs goal of vehicles being strong for a little while and then vulnerable for a little while. Whatever its called it isnt working.

Now before anyone burns me at the steak for attempting to touch vehicle balance, let me state i have some basic experience using vehicles and extensive experience shooting them. I know im going to be accused of bias by people who dont even read the whole OP. Regardless of that, as someone who would like to get into using vehicles, there is no bias here - these are simply my observations as someone who has shot at vehicles and my frustrations as someone attempting to learn how to use vehicles.

Now with that out of the way, im going to cut to the chase - most active modules are fine, and the Windows or Waves or whatever it is works tolerably. Hardners, on the other hand, are working too well and throwing everything else out of whack.

So at this point i figure many people have already stopped reading and have started replying, those of you still with me, let me explain.

Im going to be using tanks in this example but much of this applies to DS as well, tanks are simpler to type than vehicles.

Currently, with hardners active, tanks are increadibly difficult to destroy with a reasonable ammount of infantry AV. That being said, without hardners, tanks are increadibly easy to destroy with just a single person. The current state of hardners makes vehicles incredibly difficult to balance as they are both overpowered and underpowered at the same time - it all depends wholly on whether the hardners are on or off.

Am i the only one who sees an issue with this?

From an infantry perspective, since tanks are so fast and can easily outrun infantry AV, tanks can simply make their 'vulnerable' period completely irrelevant by either using 2 hardners or returning to the redline and waiting for the cooldown. Either way, the only time they will be getting shot is when they have their hardners on.

From a tank's perspective, it basically forces you to fit 2 hardners, or spend time in the redline waiting for cooldowns.

What im getting at is the current 'Windows of Opportunity' system isnt fun for both tankers (do nothing in redline and wait to get hard again) and infantry (can only ever shoot a tank when it has its hardners on) unless the tanker has 2 hardners and is perma-hardened (which isnt even waves of opportunity anymore, is it...?)

On top of this, it seems like a vehicle is not viable unless it has a hardner - which i dont believe is right. In eve, there are many ways to fit a ship. In dust, there are many ways to fit a dropsuit. When it gets to tanks though, theres only so many ways to fit a tank and still be viable, and that is because windows of opportunity forces players to fit hardners.

There isnt a solution i can propose that wouldnt start a flamewar and cause butthurt, but my point still stands:

Tanks and DS will NOT be balanced so long as 'Windows of Opportunity' applies to hardners - they will flip flop between overpowered and underpowered, much like the activation cycle of the hardners themselves. All you need to do is look back at the changes made to hardners in the past for proof.

TL;DR Vehicles are too reliant on hardners, too durable with hardners, too vulnerable without.

On the other hand I think hardeners have become too much of a must have, the few times i've bothered to try out a tank i've noticed that once the hardeners go on you might as well not bother shooting at another tank with a blaster, seems this way with a swarm launcher as well, unless your entire time is shooting at them at the same time.

I think I made a thread a while back, maybe, stating that hardeners should have a 60% res, a 45 sec active period and a 60 sec down time, BUT you could only have 1 hardener of either type. forcing the tank to leave before the hardener pops, or getting screwed up, but implement the passive hardeners and active armor reps, with a natural (Very low) HP regen / sec.

Perhaps CCP Rattati can draw inspiration from Eve Online to address hardeners.

In Eve Online, a specific class of ships known as Marauders are the only ships in Eve capable of going into what we call Bastion mode. What is Bastion mode and what does it do?

It is a mode that needs to be manually activated and goes into a set cycle of about 10 minutes if I remember the timer correctly. During this time, the ship morphs into a reinforced state where various bays are opened exposing what look like reactors to the vacuum of space. At the same time, the ship's damage resistance to any type of damage is increased by a large magnitude where it can take on almost any damage and survive until the timer runs out. Meanwhile, the ship is still able to fire back.

But there are downsides to using Bastion mode.

Once the mode is activated you can't move, you can't take in any remote repairs from another player, the mode does nothing to your damage output, and you can't manually deactivate until the timer runs its course. So if anything happens to your fleet like if they are forced to retreat, you get left behind and the opposing fleet can have their way with you. Which brings me to the next downside.

Bastion mode, is not full proof. Given enough damage in a short time, the seemingly-unbreakable tank on your ship will break. This is especially true if the ships that fire their powerful weapon happen to be Drifters which can one-hit kill even a Marauder in Bastion Mode.

How can this be applied to Dust?

The concept of Bastion mode can be adapted for use in Dust by making the following changes to the hardeners:

• Extend the time active significantly.
• Vehicles such as LAVs and HAVs that have this module become immobilized when it's active.
• Dropships are forced to hover in a stationary position but can change which way to look during the hover. They can't increase or decrease altitude.

The idea here is that hardeners are taking up so much power to increase the damage resistance of the vehicles that they are unable to furnish enough power to keep the vehicles moving. So the vehicles become sitting ducks until the hardeners finish their cycle. This also means that they won't be able to help their team in other places if they are needed elsewhere in a battle that changes rapidly.

Currently, with hardners active, tanks are increadibly difficult to destroy with a reasonable ammount of infantry AV. That being said, without hardners, tanks are increadibly easy to destroy with just a single person. .

Once the mode is activated you can't move, you can't take in any remote repairs from another player, the mode does nothing to your damage output, and you can't manually deactivate until the timer runs its course.

Actually, Bastion gives you a 25% boost to falloff and missile velocity, which does affect damage output.

While the falloff curve gets stretched, and the missiles do get to their target faster, this does not actually increase damage, only the range at which it can be applied. DPS is still determined by the cycle time of the module, and the damage each cycle produces.

you could argue the first volley of missiles has a higher dps, but after that it is the same

Got as far as " with hardeners invincible without hardeners weak......sounds like windows of opportunity to me .....good night .

With two hardeners active, a tank can be cut through with 6 AV grenades at maximum.

Now, should two people be able to destroy a double hardened tank in less than 4 seconds?

It is already suicide to not run a dual hardened maddie. So if you can't go with a maximum hardened tank and survive for more than 5 seconds, what is the point of tanks?

How about we make it so Hardeners give less resistance. Say 30% when active and 15% when not active. Also- this means reduce resource cost of Shield hardeners specifically.

Say shield tank has 2 hardeners. When both are inactive, they give a little less than 30% with stacking penalty and you have the ability to active them. Say you activate both, you get less than 60% resistance with stacking penalties.

This makes it so the tank isn't completely useless with hardeners activated and not as overpowered as now with 2 hardeners activated.

Lol "runs to the redline and waits to get hard again".

Just... Lol xD

Perhaps CCP Rattati can draw inspiration from Eve Online to address hardeners.

In Eve Online, a specific class of ships known as Marauders are the only ships in Eve capable of going into what we call Bastion mode. What is Bastion mode and what does it do?

It is a mode that needs to be manually activated and goes into a set cycle of about 10 minutes if I remember the timer correctly. During this time, the ship morphs into a reinforced state where various bays are opened exposing what look like reactors to the vacuum of space. At the same time, the ship's damage resistance to any type of damage is increased by a large magnitude where it can take on almost any damage and survive until the timer runs out. Meanwhile, the ship is still able to fire back.

But there are downsides to using Bastion mode.

Once the mode is activated you can't move, you can't take in any remote repairs from another player, the mode does nothing to your damage output, and you can't manually deactivate until the timer runs its course. So if anything happens to your fleet like if they are forced to retreat, you get left behind and the opposing fleet can have their way with you. Which brings me to the next downside.

Bastion mode, is not full proof. Given enough damage in a short time, the seemingly-unbreakable tank on your ship will break. This is especially true if the ships that fire their powerful weapon happen to be Drifters which can one-hit kill even a Marauder in Bastion Mode.

How can this be applied to Dust?

The concept of Bastion mode can be adapted for use in Dust by making the following changes to the hardeners:

• Extend the time active significantly.
• Vehicles such as LAVs and HAVs that have this module become immobilized when it's active.
• Dropships are forced to hover in a stationary position but can change which way to look during the hover. They can't increase or decrease altitude.

The idea here is that hardeners are taking up so much power to increase the damage resistance of the vehicles that they are unable to furnish enough power to keep the vehicles moving. So the vehicles become sitting ducks until the hardeners finish their cycle. This also means that they won't be able to help their team in other places if they are needed elsewhere in a battle that changes rapidly.

Rattati has only tried to make dust less and less like EVE since he took control.

I can agree that AV grenades are allitle over the top right now. Im thinking what if we halved damage and nanite cost to resupply, but doubled carry capacity? they become less alpha and more sustained DPS, same total damage dealt, but more chance to react for the vehicle.

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No, AV grenades are just about right.

Jesus, you don't even know why you think tanks are OP, you are just spouting off random crap and pretending that is a thesis.

Having a high alpha nuclear baseball is exactly what infantry needs to punish yolo swag tankers who like to drive into a horde of people.

Jesus, I am getting pretty tired of having to tell AV how to kill my tank. If I had not biomassed my heavy toon there would never be tank alive on the enemy team, but you scrubs can't even kill a standard maddy without help.

Jesus, you don't even know why you think tanks are OP